This. I have a bookcase filled with "me". Those books constitute what molded me, and (if unread) what I hoped would. My longevity being in some doubt, my kids being very young, and my ability to tell them what's in my head limited, in large part I keep that bookcase filled and arranged in hopes that someday they will discover it, read the contents, and so absorb much of what their father is (or, at that future date, was).
E-books, while convenient, can be lost en masse in an instant. Heck, a bunch vanished last week from my tablet when I upgraded the operating system (most were recovered, but not all). My wife may be irritated at the space occupied by my paper books, yet therein is the point: they're not going away any time soon without real effort. Atoms persist; bits are fleeting.
I can't ask my dad anything anymore as he has Alzheimer's, but he had given me his book collection and I've been scanning them, too. (Of course I don't cut up the sentimental treasures, but there are only a handful of those.)
Also, years ago, he got low vision and couldn't read comfortably anymore. If it was today, I would set up a projector to throw the pdf pages on the wall so he could keep reading.
I buy the physical book, cut the back off, scan it to a pdf and throw the book into the recycling bin.
On the book scanning note though, do you have a special book scanner? I've never seen one outside of professional shops and turning the pages seems like a ginormous hassle.
I use a Fujitsu fi-5120C hopper-fed scanner (does both sides at once) and a QCM-8200M stack slicer. Those make short work of most books. The Fujitsu scanner software includes an OCR. I scan at 400dpi. If a page gets messed up, I use pdftk to merge in corrected scans.
I also use it to scan in small mountains of old tax records and documents I had stuffed everywhere.
The odd thing is I've come to prefer the pdf images, as they look like a book page (!). This works out great on ereaders with larger screens like the Kindle DX, or the Kobo Aura which has an HD eink display.
The regular Kindle is a bit squinty with a paperback sized PDF, but I bought some dimestore reading glasses which helps wit dat.
I welcome the advent of better and better ereaders.
The files go into my Box account, and I never lose another book.
-- From the things-were-all-right-when-I-was-a-kid file
However, the size, portability and lower price are worth it. It's hard to read thick books on the train, space is at premium in Tokyo, and foreign paper books are significantly more expensive here.
The value proposition of a physical book is that is a physical artifact with concrete ownership; you can sell it, lend it, put it on a shelf for guests to see, forget it and rediscover it a decade later, or have your grandchildren find it in your attic in 80 years.
These two value sets are not inherently exclusive; there's no reason why you can't have both. But until now, the business model has prevented acquiring both hard and digital copies of everything from being economical.